Gigabyte Osmium Keyboard: Great Design, Poor Accuracy

Article Index

Programming and Macros

One of the Aivia Osmium's most impressive features is its Ghost programming engine.

The Osmium has five hardware macro keys, G1-G5. The keyboard supports five different profile modes. The current profile can be changed via the Ghost System Tray application, or by clicking the Aivia logo on the keyboard itself. The logo lights up in five different colors to denote which profile is currently selected.

Users who don't want to muck with different profiles can disable the others in software.

Ghost makes it extremely easy to program keystroke combinations, insert time delays between commands, and is capable of parsing the mouse's location as well. The Macro below opens "My Computer."

A macro that only works on the desktop would be rather gimmicky -- this one is designed to use Aero Peek to first clear the screen by clicking in the lower-right-hand corner. Then it opens the Computer icon, based on where that icon is on my desktop.

The Ghost software is capable of reading the mouse's position when a game is running in fullscreen mode, which makes it easy to program macros for actions that combine mouse clicks and key strokes in a game like World of Warcraft.

One note of caution: the Ghost allows you to program a macro that loops indefinitely. This is actually a rather bad idea; I had to disconnect the keyboard when I first tested my Computer icon-opening macro. There's apparently no way to break a loop once it's been engaged.